Doesn’t sound too likely in the Destoryermen World Japan would be pretty cold and the Grik don’t work well in cold. Nearly as bad as the Peshawar Lancers World. So going forward from that unless there are other cold weather Grik we have not met before don’t think it would happen.

I was sniffing around the site & saw “Uncategorized” under the Categories heading, got curious since we never see any posts there. It turns out it’s the General Discussions page, but with no entries & no way to make an entry. There’s a part of the page listing # of comments & if you click that, you come here.
Just saw, “Posted March 17, 2016 by Taylor Anderson in category “Uncategorized, under the ROB cover above. I’ll see what’s there next.

Although I’ve only been reading the series for the last couple of years and am currently only half way through my second reading of the series it has got me thinking.
As posted above if the British came through with the French/Spanish/German/Italian forces and did not join them and managed to escape they may have found other groups that crossed over.

My thought is that a Crimean War convoy may have crossed over. Two or three transports, plus stores ships and maybe two or three warships might have crossed and found themselves in the Grik free north. As wives (normally 1 in 10) would have come with the troops there would be some say 3,000 men and 2-300 women and maybe even children crossed they would have been able to take over as the major modern force so could provide a refuge for the 20th century British and with that a major pain for the Axis forces. Plus the Axis forces one must assume also found human’s or ‘Cats’ to provide labour and support for their little empire.

And that also got me thinking that the Nussie’s may have also found others say those from 17th century colonies or even the AWI which again as the major modern force could have given them some major advantages.

Could be. The Black Sea was sailed by a whole lot of cultures, so it’s not hard to imagine a hypothetical HMS Resistance forming a Persian-Byzantine-Varangian-Turkish-Russian coalition and giving the League a severe migraine.

No-go on the East Coast – RoB says the NUS doesn’t want much to do with them because they’re tribal and xenophobic, and there’s not much reason for readers to doubt them yet.

Plus taking onto account that the Byzantine Coalition could have access to other ships that came through at the time of World War One or just before which could give them sufficient modern knowledge to support the British forces in 1940. With Battle wagons plus say a Ark Royal type carrier with Gloster Gladiators aircraft which out of date would be fairly easy to re-create they would be able keep the League off balance for some time.

Equally the League could have access to the descendants of Barbary pirates, the US forces sent in the early 1800’s to crush the pirates or even British troops & colonists from Tangiers in the 1680’s.

Then we have General Halik in Persia what if his ‘people’ make contact and after their involvement with Niwa and the Alliance might agree to support Byzantine Coalition and make things really hot for the League

Hey everybody, I’d appreciate it if you’d do me a favor. My direct contact feature has not been working. I even tested it myself. It is supposed to be fixed so I would appreciate it if some of you would test it for me. Thanks!

By the way, here’s a chance to make a real-time contribution: I need the colors of French and Italian tracers. I’ve found very vague references here and there, but I’m not satisfied. Anybody know for sure?

Sure. For French ships it was ship dependent for larger shells. Each capital ship was firing a specific color. Each shell had holes at the base to store colored powder. It’s the main cause for the premature explosion of a shell at Dakar as the shell was weakened by the drilled hole.

For smaller caliber it was red or white depending on the batch and/or the supplier.

Thanks, that’s what I thought. Looking for small arms tracer colors. And yes, they are less accurate at range due to weight variations as well as other things. Huh, you’re right. I forgot about the variable large caliber tracer compounds to distinguish whose fire was going where. US used dye to color the splashes. Good and bad. Useless at night of course, without spotlights—which could be good and bad too. ……..is it just me or have we already had this conversation? Ha! I get so many things running around in my head I sometimes think I need a brain enema.

I also had a check: tracers were not used all the time. After WW1 the idea was to use them as few as possible and to prefer registered fire to prevent observation.

Technically some incendiary/tracer bullets were also available (phosphorus) but they were dangerous to store and use (any leak means that you will get a sure fire). On naval ships and/or for a landing this is a big no-no.

That’s what brain enemas are for Matthieu. To flush unneeded (or unpleasant) things out of your head. Like you haven’t never given the rest of us reason to need one! As for tracer use, they never stopped using them at sea throughput the war. And not just in the pacific. During naval ops in the med, as late as landing in southern France, ships were chastised for shooting at enemy planes in the dark, particularly from blacked out anchorages. The tracers drew straight lines to their source. They were supposed to wait until they were attacked.
Large caliber tracers never went out of use in the pacific, even after virtually every ship’s fire was radar guided. Read any account of surigao strait. My favorite described salvos that looked like “ brightly lit passenger trains going over a hill “

I know nothing I believe is a translation of the German phrase: “Ich fas nicht” which the equivalent of the English “I don’t know”. Literally it’s “I know not” or “I hold not” (fas may be misspelled as I can’t find my German dictionary.) The phrase may be idiomatic to some dialects of German and not others. Anybody with more knowledge on the phrase jump in here.

Prize a signed Advanced Reader’s Copy ARC of “Pass of Fire” from Taylor Anderson

Write a transfer story. Yep you decide what comes out of the storm, US warship, Lemurian Love boat, Japanese destroyer allied with the United States in WW 2, a small fleet no more than five ships, or whatever. Met by a Lemurian captain who served on USS Walker or Mahan in 1942 to commanding DD 25 USS Zambezi River in 1945. You name your character’s and choose the sex, and how much of his backstory you wish to write.
Minimum five pages on your word processing software, and as large as will fit on FaceBook if you are long winded. I’d shoot for ten or so pages 😉 Save as a file on our Fan Fiction Page:

Say, that whole thing in Devil’s Due, with Bekiaa being thought of as a “savage” and a “barbarian” – do Republic Cats see other Mi-Anakka colonies the same way Romans would see Gauls or Scythians? Are their arts and sciences really that far ahead, or is it just bigotry?

I got to thinking. (Yes, I know, not that again!). In Pass of Fire it looks as though they’re going to try & take the pass. The Doms will fight back of course & the Leopardo may lend a hand (per the cover painting). A naval battle IN the pass will take time & restrict the maneuvering of the various ships & Leopardo in particular. It strikes me that they’ll still be fighting when the tide turns & starts running through the pass. It’ll be fascinating to see how Taylor describes it. Given the shape of the eastern shore line funneling in the tide, I think the bore will be significant. Slower steam & sailing ships may be driven ashore or onto shoals. Damaged & crippled ships may be overwhelmed entirely. Given some warning from Nancy’s by radio the allies may be able to get to sheltered bays, but it’ll still disrupt the battle & be a race to see who recovers the initiative first. I’m really stoked for it.

The pass itself looks wide enough. It would work, until Leopardo got into the mix. A line of slow ships is an excellent target for torpedoes. I wonder if any of the allies Eastern fleet mount torpedoes?

Don’t think there are ANY torpedo craft. Need some MTB’s fast. Teach Nussies how to build then, and and maybe E-boats.Shallow draft would be less affected by tidal bore, correct? And didn’t Oldendorf have PT’s at Surigao Strait? Set up and ICE plant in New Orleans.

But what they need is some P-1’s, even the older ones, for recon and harassing Doms. Maybe even a Washing Machine Charlie or two. With Leets promoted, perhaps Silva could be elevated to the Head of Dirty Tricks department.

Most of the MTBs were sunk in the attack on Kurokawa’s base (I think there’s only one left). They are quick to build, but it would still be months before the eastern fleet saw any… unless they already planned for it & sent a squadron over a while back in one of the floating dry docks.

Steve W: Touched a nerve, have I? There’s a happy middle ground between “build a dozen Bismarcks by next year” and “build more of the same and wait for a miracle to happen;” five books ago, you’d have said USS Ellis was a waste of resources too.

Steve M/Lou: There’s two Walker-class DDs about to launch, Mahan, Ellis and Gray are still fit for duty, and Walker should be done by next book. Even without MTBs, Gray and 2-3 more should be enough to choke the Pass with torps.

Motor torpedo boats are hardly optimal ships for trans-ocean campaign. And wasting torpedoes on Dom’s wooden frigates is just not cost-effective. NUS have rifle muzzle-loaders, which are more than enough to dealt with Dom’s ships.

With all respect, but the best Dom’s could have as armor, is wrought iron plates. Probably even multi-layered thin plates, bolted together. And it is added to their existing designs, which means that the ammount of armor and its thickness is very limited. We do not see any “proper” Dom’s ironckads yet.

Against muzzle-loading rifles, such armor is of very limited use. It could stop shells, but not solid shots or Pallizers.

Justin, it would depend on the book’s time frame.
If they’re assaulting the pass within a month or two of the Zambezi campaign, they won’t have anything but what’s already there. The allies essentially shot their bolt there navy wise & will have to keep what ships are left to support the land campaign.
If it’s months from ROB’s ending, then yes, they may have a DD or two there, or Reddy may bring the Gray over. It’ll take time though, 16,500 miles from the Zambezi (give or take a few hundred miles) to Panama at 10 knots (cruising speed) is 58 days. If they staged tankers along the route ahead of time, they could reduce that. At 20 knots, it still takes four weeks or so. The new ships are faster, but you can’t run at full speed continually without damaging your engines. Leaving from Baalkpan cuts about 5,500 miles, but is still a long haul.

Alexey, I think if they did have something with torpedoes mounted, it would be handy to have if/when the Leopardo enters the fight for the Doms. Her guns have comparable range to the 4″ allied weapons. She also mounts torpedoes & if a target presents itself (like an Empire liner) may use them. If heavily engaged you’re shooting everything you have at multiple targets. IIRC even with superior guns, the allied fleet took a pounding the last time they engaged the Doms. As far as MTBs go, they’d make the voyage either in a floating dry dock or stowed in a transport of some sort. They’re not suited for open ocean voyages, but could be useful in the confines of the pass.

From a naval standpoint, the Grik are done. The Union rules the waves at Africa. Gray should be sent to America to support the assault on the pass of fire. She would be best used there. The thing is, tactically the best thing to use there would be something like the armored barges used in the crimean war. The pass wont have much room for maneuver and it will be a slugfest against the forts. Armor barges and deck them out in guns and get in a shooting match. Gray isn’t heavily armored but her guns would be more useful there than at Africa where the fight will quickly move inland and too far for naval fire support.

Lou, the main Allied problem is that they are constantly get involved into the slugging matches, using the ship, that are simply not suited for that. Its another demonstration, why the “stay out of range and pound ’em with air power” was not the universal anwser until nukes and guided missiles came into play.

Well, Taylor can’t put all the details in the books, or we’d end up with 20-pound volumes like Clancy or JRR Tolkien. And since he’s more ordered than a lot of authors, he leaves a good framework to fill in.

OK, I’m the logistics nut. It makes more sense to me to teach powerboat building to allies who are familiar with oil refining & burning, propeller shafts, and coastal operations. They have wood a plenty; ship them a DE full of engines and a Clipper full of blueprints. Maybe Garrety can take a load of Nussies back to the Republic (I think it’s closer). But it’s going to be a long war, and a defensive navy close to its supply and industrial bases, can wage a pretty expensive war of attrition. Remember, the LOT doesn’t have an adequate industrial base. And by building up the Nussies, a peop;e with a solid idea of democracy, it might make them a little more appealing ally than the Doms or LOT, to the East Coast unknowns.

Matt’s right the Grik Navy has gone the way of the Peruvian and Ecuadorian navies. Esshk (for as long as he’s around before someone slips him a shiv or a Mickey) isn’t a big fan of the navy except to use up what’s left. The Hij may be getting a little uppity for his tastes; speaking of tastes, we know where the more vocal of the Hij may have gone.. gone for cookpots every one.

Which brings me back home to Walkers. They’ve got speed, range, but can defend shorelines, especially if backed up by air and coastal artillery. The LOT, on the other hand, doesn’t have a decent Caribbean base unless they seize Cuba, unlikely since they don’t have the power to project. All they sent to the Indian Ocean were one-way trippers.I vote for more Walkers, maybe a post-Walker design, with maybe a few Porters or Flashies thrown in for good measure. Yhe Union has to bottle up the Pope, if only to safeguard the Venezuelan oil fields.

I wonder if we’re going to find out more on the Mediterranean situation in Pass of Fire. Find out why they can’t or won’t commit their fleet to wiping out our heroes. The only thing I can come up with is their squall event was so large, it not only pulled most of their invasion fleet through, but also a good part of a British force coming to intercept it. The Brits may have linked up with another in-place civilization on the northern shores of the Med somewhere. They would probably have some of the refitted Queen Elizabeth class BBs &/or a BC or two. I’d love to see this beauty still operational after receiving a 1930s refit.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/TigerSP1674.png/1200px-TigerSP1674.png

Could be. The Bosphorus and Dardanelles probably resemble canals right now; any civilization hiding behind them is going to be a real pain in the ass for the League to dislodge, especially with a couple of transplanted battlewagons to back them up.

Fun fact: the Renown class was originally supposed to be more R and QE battleships, but the contract was cancelled, then resurrected as a set of battlecruisers.

The Grik are in Persia for sure & probably in Turkey as well. Any civilization there would have probably been eaten by now. If the Dardanelles & Bosphorus are passible, the northern coasts Black Sea would be almost ideal for them. Too cold for the Grik, a defendable choke point to get to them & access to the Ploesti oil fields for fuel. If they aren’t passible for large ships, then I’d shoot for the Adriatic Sea area. Maybe Venice or Trieste.

Could be too, but they’d want to keep their ships… and then the Adriatic’s right next door to Tripoli.

My guess, they’d camp out with Teuta’s Ardiaei, right beside the mouth of the Adriatic and surrounded by mountains. Line the coast with mines and batteries, keep a running patrol of torpedo boats, garrison the the Dinarides against flanking invasions, and Bob’s your uncle.

I get they’d want to fortify the Straits of Otranto & patrol out of one of the nearby bays (like Vlore), but I don’t think they’d want their main base exposed like that. I’d be thinking defense in depth back around Trieste. They’d need to have hooked up with a good sized civilization to garrison The Dinaric Alps & mountains to the south. Aircraft & ground patrols & hidden observation posts with radios would be easier.
My uncle’s name was Leroy though, so who knows.

Yeah, but the Med Fleet’d need a good-sized civilization no matter what; the League came equipped for a land war and the RN did not.

AFAIK, we’ve only been talking about a sea-based threat so far. If the fascists decide to pull a Yamashita and attack from western Italy, Venice is history without an Apennine Line. From there it’s just three river crossings to Trieste.

That’s why I’d shoot for Trieste or maybe Rijeka. Although if there is a civilization in the area, the LOT would have to fight their way through it to get to either Trieste or Rijeka. The Brits could back up their allies with some dismounted light guns for towed artillery pieces & MGs. Defended river crossings are tough & to get there they’d have to cross the Apennines which would tear up their mechanized units & make getting heavy artillery through a bitch. The easier way would be a landing in the Genoa area, where the mountains are smaller hills & just a short hop to the Po River valley. From there, it’s a straight shot to the Adriatic coast. If there is a civilization there though, that’s prime territory & will probably be occupied. They’d have to fight their way through the locals backed by British support.
By now the Brits should be well established with the locals & have some industrial capacity, say at about the level of the Republic. They’d have more men & time to spread knowledge around than our guys did.
It’d be cool if the locals were a mixture of humans & Gentaa. Maybe the main Gentaa populations are in Europe & the Republic Gentaa are descendants of an exploration fleet caught in the Cape storm. The humans could be a mix of Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, maybe even some Minoans.

The surname could have morphed over the years to better fit the norms of the republic. Spellings do change after all.

Also Jin is an anglicized version of the mandarin which uses an entirely different writing system. And all members of the Chinese language family are tonal in nature so Jin doesn’t really convey the proper pronunciation anyways. When the Chinese ancestors crossed over the various systems for anglicizing mandarin didn’t exist, nor did anyone in the republic speak English at the time. So I think it’s fair to say they found their own way. To my knowledge the Chinese writing system is not used in the republic so the sounds had to be converted into the Latin alphabet in some way.

One of our members over on the Association has made a library of articles to research Destroyermen subjects he writes:

Johnathan Simpson
just wanted to post what might be some useful reference material..if anyone needs something specific, i’m sitting on around a Tb and a half of material. if you need a subject, just ask…

50 degree temps in Northern New England (after xub-zero last week) and thinking of summer, when a new volume will appear… Pam relents and marries Silva, a drunken Larry makes an unfortunate snack of Petey at the reception, and hopefully, Gravois gets it.

Reread some ancient history stuff a while ago. Given the ridiculous amount of succession crises and rebellions that hereditary rule creates, I’m surprised the Republic stills exists, much less keeps the Grik out.

Good point, historically, but the Republic is a little weird, and fairly complicated. It’s implied it took a lot of blood to build it, over the centuries, but once all that was over–say at least a century ago–there was never a large standing army. No need for one, since the Grik were reluctant to invade an inhospitable climate, and there was no place for the Republic to expand and become a “proper” empire. Most pre-war legions were composed more of regional reservists than anything else, one reason it took so long to gather the legions in the first place. The overall ruler, originally Caesar, increasingly “Kaiser,” is hereditary–to a degree–and must be confirmed by the Senate. If a candidate is unsuitable–and there are a variety of criteria for this–then other members of the “royal” family are considered. Because of different cultural influences, Repub royals enjoy a measure of respect and traditional reverence those in Rome never did, simply due to birth. Once a Kaiser is installed, only a 3/4 majority of Senators can remove him or her. He or she has fairly broad powers, but the Senate holds the purse strings. All this works, and manages to maintain the consent of the governed because everybody still needs to keep their constituents happy. Senators are selected by collections of regional electors, (call them People’s Tribunes, though I’ve never decided whether to actually call them that. It hasn’t mattered), who serve as a kind of electoral college, and who in turn are directly selected by the populace. On the other hand, they can be replaced at any time, and a sufficient number of them can recall and replace a Senator. As you can imagine, this would result in a lot of petty scheming and shifting alliances, but wouldn’t be as crazy or capricious as a direct democracy while eventually–theoretically–allowing the common folk to get their way. On the other hand, without imperial conquests sending tribute for a bread dole or something like that, a vibrant economy and employment is more important to the common folk than “bread and circuses” and the people would frown on their leaders blowing tax money on stuff like that–resulting in the recall of Tribunes, even Senators. By the same token, an unpopular war could do the same. One reason Senate funding and support for the Kaiser’s buildup was slow. Not that the majority of the people probably weren’t ready to finally do something about the Grik, but it would take time to convince them, and more time to convince the Tribunes and Senators they WERE convinced–while, like all politicians, they’d be worried how the resultant hardships, combat losses, and increased taxes might eventually turn public opinion, especially after the war is over. Make sense? Not perfect by any means, but probably pretty stable. At least in normal times.

Almost guaranteed. A Ming Dynasty contingent landing there & encountering a “monkey” civilization? They would consider them less than human to start & probably try to enslave or at least take over. After that has shaken out over some centuries, the Roman arrival, with all their arrogance & attitudes towards barbarians would set off another round of strife. Integrating those cultures into the existing Lemurian & Gentaa civilization would engender some serious indigestion. After those two incidents, they would be understandably leery of any new arrivals.

Chinese involvement with the Lemurians predates the republic, Phoenicians, Plutonic Egyptians, and possibly unmentioned others arrived earlier and the Gentaa myth of being a hybrid human-Lemurian cross. They arrived long before the arrival of the 10th century Romans (about 1,000 years prior to the 1940s) and they establish the republic. More recent arrivals join the republic, various Black Africans, any recent Ming Chinese residents, and the crew and prisoners of SMS Amerika.

the crazy thing is as the republic is very old I suspect that they have lost their early history’s. The Carthaginians and the other seafaring races around 1500 BC in our era are not mentioned (at least not by taylor).

10th century Romans? I have some rereading to do. They must have been from yet another AU, since the western Roman Empire fell in the 5th century. If we’re talking the eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), by the 10th century, they wouldn’t really look much like the classic Roman army, or be organized the same way. The Byzantine symbol does look suspiciously familiar though.https://i.pinimg.com/564x/2c/ef/da/2cefda8a2e83f22024d556f786891d84.jpg

Justin, thanks for the info. I think Taylor did settle on a Republic flag a few months ago. It was a merging of several concepts (yours, Nestor’s, Charles, mine & the drunk down the block).https://www.deviantart.com/loupy59/art/Republic-Battle-Flag-Provisional-v3-765076389
As far as who has shown up down south, if they ran into a strakka when they arrived, they could basically be blown there from anywhere & any period. I would have given better odds to a Phoenician or Carthaginian arrival than the Romans though. They weren’t much of a sea power.

The Romans had traders as far as Tanzania, so it’s not entirely implausible.

The map has the Romans settling on the west coast though, so it probably wasn’t that. Augustus commissioned a couple of expeditions to Lake Chad, and they left a garrison; perhaps nine centuries later, some emperor says “I want the legion on the Lacus Hippopotamus to journey to the Horn” and the poor bastards end up fighting dinosaurs all the way to Alex-aandra?

No reason to believe that the later periods were any less violent, either.

South Africa is temperate and not much larger than Ontario, so rebellions and economic reforms would be less of a problem than in Egypt/Rome/China. And the legionari-soldiers have a say in politics, so no Pompeys or Antonys.
But what if Caesar dies with no heir? Or the royal family starts a “heated” inheritance dispute? And why is the Senate allowed to confirm Caesar in the first place? There’s a whole lot of civil wars – and at least one Magna Carta – that we haven’t been made privy to yet.

While we’re at it, does Nig-Taak have a Kaiserina, or a Kronprinz/prinzessin? Might be a problem if a League bomber gets lucky and it turns out he doesn’t…

You’re welcome. I always enjoy the reaction to info I’ve never yet been able to find space for in the books. It took a lot of contemplation and it’s fun to watch you guys think about it too. Who knows building the republic might make a fun book someday.

I went to the book store today to see if ROB was out in paperback yet. I was trying to find out what the corrected specs were for the two row radials. No luck.
However, I saw DD & glanced at it to see whether our corrections made it in. They did. Pretty cool to see our inputs on paper! I didn’t check them all, as the page counts are different than the hardcover. I just found some of the easy ones. Yes, I could have gotten the Kindle version of ROB, but at $14, I’ll wait until it comes down in line with the rest of the series.

Y’all’s input is always appreciated. As I’ve said before, I think the way the specs get goofed up is that, when changes don’t match those in previous style sheets, appointed copyeditors default to earlier style sheets and change stuff back–all in a genuine, good faith effort to preserve continuity! This has been a never-ending battle. And even when they acknowledge my revisions for the paperbacks, they don’t always change the STYLE SHEETS so the same errors return again in later books. Very frustrating. In an ideal world, I would’ve had the same copyeditors from start to finish, and they would’ve recognized that the cast of characters and specs would evolve from book to book, but it just doesn’t work that way. In a sense, we’re all actually pretty lucky they let me include that (pretty big) chunk of stuff in the books at all, since extra pages (and ink!) means extra cost for them, for no return that fits their business model. Don’t forget, they didn’t even let me include the cutaway of Walker in the first few books! Now they don’t even squeal when I sometimes rather egregiously abandon the wordcount limit. FYI, my contracted wordcount is @ 150,000. The last few books have been @ 180,000+–and I sure don’t get paid more for those extra words! Ha!
So ultimately, yeah, considering that in the grand scheme of things, my complaints are like shooting BBs at a mountain fish, we should all be grateful they make ANY changes I recommend, and I’m sure grateful to you for helping me catch them. Plenty of cause for satisfaction for all who contribute here.

Just for splits and wiggles, started picking up new fiction off the library shelf and lo and behold, it seems like most authors have idiots for art directors. From bullets being fired cartridge and all towards the target, to a picture of the blond heroine (unfortunately, she’s brunette). Lou and Nestor, you guys could be making a fortune in the art business.

Pretty close, I imagine. I’ve been lucky that they occasionally incorporate a few of my suggestions. My greatest achievement came with my very first book, however, when I didn’t have any pull at all. What do you think of when you hear the words WWII destroyer? Probably a Fletcher, right? Well that’s what they tried to put on the first cover. Almost as bad as that Russian cover Alexey showed us that had a Japanese DD on it. Anyway, I threw an absolute walleyed fit and showered them with pics of 4-stackers, insisting that it was essential that readers see that on the cover. To my amazement, they caved, and I think I was right.

I’d rather see your handiwork than a Golden Dragon buffet of unrelated plot elements, or a Walker that looks like Tugboat Annie. Or perspective that looks like it was viewed through the bottom of a bottle. Eh, we buy it for Taylor’s work. But now that I’m into buying the hardcovers (lending library patrons refuse to wait a year), the dust jackets just slip away, lost forever…

Thanks for the vote of confidence (aw shucks!). Had I not been compelled to dedicate most of my waking hours to my day job to pay bills I guess I might have made some effort into taking art commissions. After all, the more time you dedicate to it the more efficient you become until you’re able to increase your output and visibility but more to the point, monetize it in a more reliable and consistent manner.

Anyway, I used to work for a book publisher and at that place cover artists were rarely given the chance to learn what the story is about. We had a romance imprint where the cover art usually consisted of bare chested Fabio striking a pose, replace the hanky with a rose but just rehash the same template for all titles.

A wire-controlled glider, launched & guided from parent plane. Just the most primitive gyro autopilot onboard (mainly to control the roll), and two simple electrical motors/solenoids to control rudder and elevators through the polarized relay. Onboard the parent plane, operator controlled glider through the kilometer-long wire, by simply connecting the glider servomotors with parent plane dynamo through the polarized relay. When no power is applied, rudder/elevator is put into a neutral position by simple springs.

Basically, it’s mid-XIX century remote control technology. Four wires in cable, two servomotors, one dynamo. Two wires to command “rudder left/rudder right” (by powering the servomotor & choosing the straight/reversed polarity), two to command “elevators up/down”. Ailerons are under gyro control all time.

Would the Allies have the know how to build a paintball gun, could it be mounted on a Fleashooter, and would it be safe to shoot it at another Fleashooter? If yes to all three, it seems like a good ATC training item.

They might be able to build one, but I don’t know if they’d be able to make the ball part holding the paint strong enough to withstand the launch velocity needed for long range work. Most paint guns are low velocity affairs, but for air to air training, you’d need to up that quite a bit to get the range needed. If they could, it would probably punch holes in the doped fabric of the Fleashooters. It might even hit hard enough to shatter the windshield & damage the wooden propeller. If I was them, I’d have to pass on the idea.

Yeah, the way they did it back in the day was to have a plane tow a banner way behind it and have the others shoot at it. Not ideal, can’t really learn deflection shooting that way. But without simulators or something akin to miles gear you can’t really train for that realistically anyways.

Drones, guys. Target drones. The lion’s share of US military anti-air efficiency later in the war was due to Radioplane target drones, which allowed gunners & pilots to be trained against maneuvering targets.

Well, as a probable half-measure – target glider with primitive gyro autopilot (1910s tech), towed into air by the plane. On altitude, glider would be released & then used as target. Cheap, but better than towed target.

Actually the army developed frangible bullets for the .30-06 cartridge and reinforced the structure on P-63’s (the ones that weren’t sent to the Soviet Union)among others and used them as manned targets for the trainee pilots to shoot at. The round was originally call the Cal.30 Ball frangible T44 and later type classified as the Ball Frangible M22. It used a 107 grain bullet composed of 50/50 powdered lead and Bakelite with a mv of 1360 fps from the machine gun trainer M9. Production in the later part of the war was 30 million rounds per months. See “History of Modern US Military Small Arms Ammunition Vol II 1940-1945 pages 87-91. Good project for Baalkpan Arsenal.

“Actually the army developed frangible bullets for the .30-06 cartridge and reinforced the structure on P-63’s (the ones that weren’t sent to the Soviet Union)among others and used them as manned targets for the trainee pilots to shoot at. ”

Problem is, that Alliance could not adopt that method – their machines aren’t metal and could not be armored much. So, towed targets & drones remain the only possible solutions.

Using frangible ball on the drone would reduce the damage and probably allow them to be used more than once. At this point using a drone one and shooting it down would be very expensive training. The frangible ball would break up on major structural members or the engine rather than causing serious damage. Yeas it would go through fabric, but that can be repaired or replaced easily. Wasting an engine or the radio control equipment on a single flight would be a prohibited waste of resources for the allies at this point. The army also had a method of coating the bullet tip with colored inks which would leave a colored mark on the aircraft of target sleeve so they could tell whose hits were which. When they get to that point frangible ball could be used for direct fire on tanks in training with sub caliber devices in AT guns or other artillery.

Target drone technology and command guided munitions actually arrived at about the same time. Both the Germans and Americans fielded radio controlled bombs during the war. The Fritz X famously sunk an Italian battleship after Italy surrendered.

So Taylor what books/series you have finished would your recommend to those who love your books? And guys what books or series you have finished that most remind you of the Destroyermen series? My favorite, other than Destroyermen, was SM Sterling’s Island in the sea to time series where the coastguard training ship Eagle and the Island of Nantucket go back in time.

I can also recommend the old master Robert Heinlein who’s been dead for over 30 years and yes all Heinlein’s works were political. Also check out P.T.Duetermann and D.C.Poyer, they both write contemporary or historical naval fiction. Dueterman has written some especially good fiction set during WW2. He usually interleaves the technology and tactics into the story in an interesting and central but not distracting way. Hans Helmut Kirst used in experiences in the German Army from 1933 to 1945 to write novels. In non-fiction read Storm of Steel (Im Stahlgewittern)by Ernst Junger, it’s his memoir of the Great War. I will warn you that the English translations were usually done by Brits who did their best to make a German come off as a public school Englishman.

That’s probably a good description of Heinlein’s adult works. His juveniles didn’t have much free love in them but plenty of libertarianism in them. One of the first writers of military sf was Phillip Francis Nowland in “Armageddon 2419 AD” the original Buck Rogers novel in 1928. It’s a good read and nothing like the later cartoon strip or the TV series.

Heinlein’s early stuff–Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky, Rocket Ship Galileo, etc., is what got me interested in sci-fi. Didn’t like his later stuff nearly as much, and didn’t discover it until I was already enjoying other authors I liked more–without the pornography

Justin, do you object to Mr. Ringo being “political” or do you object to his particular brand of “political”? I see Alexy objects to his particular brand. David Weber and John Ringo collaborated on the Prince Roger series. Taylor and Mr. Weber’s works are just as political as John Ringo’s and IMO have the same preference for modernism and its enlightenment values that John Ringo has. Mr. Weber and Taylor write works that if movies would be PG-13, whereas Mr. Ringo writes works that would be R or TV-Ma. None of the three are writing in a post-modernism vein.

It depends, are all his books like Troy Rising? Because if so, I’d counter with how Mr Weber and Mr Anderson realize that they’re writing stories, not manifestos or Author Tracts. They don’t do any blatant race bashing either.

With all respect, but Ringo problem is not the politic tones as themselves – as you correctly noted,

” Taylor and Mr. Weber’s works are just as political as John Ringo’s and IMO have the same preference for modernism and its enlightenment values that John Ringo has. ”

– but the style in which John Ringo basically shove his political views down the reader throat. Lack of tact, I dare say. Also (IMHO), because he worried more about heroes fighting the political agenda, rather than opposing characters, his bad guys are rather… dull and two-dimensional.

“Prince Roger” series is especially notorious, because the bad guys are so hypocritical, that basically they threw away their own agenda for more hypocrisy. The Saints who are ecologically-opposed of the human colonization of other planes are also living on the other planes, because Ringo wanted them to be as hypocritical as possible, forget about making sense. If he sacrificed a bit of hypocrisy, he could make them live on artificial space colonies and hollowed-out asteroids, which would make their anti-planetary colonization agenda much more sensible, while maintaining that they are still Bad Guys who are cruel and zealous (and more than willing to bend their agenda to suit their leader’s needs).

Also try Robert Adams’ Castaways In Time series. The first three were good, they kind of went down hill after that, with #6 being the last & worst. His ill health & death may have had something to do with it.

Gonna come out of hiding real quick to say that I love anything by Harry Turtledove, Ender’s Game , the “Honor Harrington” series by David Weber, the “Old Man’s War” series by John Scalzi, the “Gaunt’s Ghosts” series by Dan Abnett(It’s sharpe’s rifles in space), and the Horblower and Sharpe’s Rifles series. Also The Martian and the other book by that author.

Well I do, of course, but even I might consider that excessive. Would be hard to piece anything coherent back together. Opens a sack of confetti, mixed with leaves and dead grass. “Hey! My book is here!”

Time to remember the Greatest Generation, those who served & those who fell when the USA was attacked at Pearl Harbor. My dad was at sea on the USS Benham (DD-397), escorting the USS Enterprise that day. He said they all knew it was coming, when was the question. Which was answered, 7 Dec 1941.

I have a slight problem. I am about to start river of bones but I can’t remember if I read Devils Due. In Devils Due is that where the allies attacked the Grik Capital with bombers and Kurokawa get a League battleship?

Thank you Mr Anderson. Just finished reading your fifth book after noticing a super review of the series in the. Spectator magazine here in East Sussex England. I was born in 1940 so am fairly aware of WW2 but more of Vietnam war. Thanks again – do you know of a database of the lead characters?

A fast way to go to the index is put curser on COMMUNITY go down and click on Special: Categories. You will see that there is a broad Characters list (About 335 named characters in the books to date) and divisions in Male and Species. Say you wanted to know the percentage of Female Lemurian Characters (28) 28/335 x 100 = 8.35% 😉

Yeah, Jack Campbell is a friend, and they sent me Vanguard to blurb. Really liked it, and look forward to the next. As a friend, I’m ashamed that I’ve never had a chance to read the rest of his stuff–I don’t get time to read much fiction at all, it seems–but I loaded his “Lost Fleet” series on my Kindle some time ago. I plan to read it, (and catch up on a LOT of things I’ve missed) this coming summer.

I’ve read the lost fleet. Actually got into it around the same time I got into your series and went back and forth while waiting on releases. Cool to know you two are friends. Do you also know Harry Turtledove personally?

I read the whole thing. The first books are really interesting and fresh. Suddenly is becomes less interesting as the content is just the same. When he introduced the new aliens he almost jumped the shark. At the same time the new series (shattered stars IIRW) is interesting all characters are grey.
I don’t read prequels as I don’t like the idea.

His books are a little bit too US centered. I mean that the author uses far too much the current US morality and way of life to explain the way his Sci-Fi characters act.
Ex: a major plot is “the love between the admiral and the ship captain, something obviously forbidden as they belong to the same command line”… Something which is forbidden only in the US (most other countries don’t care or expect people to behave like adults). It’s something that Destroyermen have been able to avoid as each group has its own morality.
Ex2: politics are always corrupt and useless while admirals are perfect…

I dunno about #2 – Hemry/Campbell’s written plenty of horrible, power-hungry officers throughout the first six alone. Unlike, let’s say, Ian Douglas, it seems pretty clear that the grievances are with bad leaders in general.

Campbell shows what might happen in the military & civilian halls of power after a century of fruitless slaughter. There are some good politicians & some bad ones with many making bad decisions for the best of reasons & vice versa. As there are now. The same goes for the military forces, with a bitter twist. I don’t want to ruin it for Taylor with specifics though. I, personally, enjoyed the series immensely & the prequels are engaging in a new start, frontier sort of way.

When I described the series to a friend I said, imagine the main character is a decent normal starship captain. But nothing extraordinary. He comes out of cryosleep to find that the prevailing doctrine of the day is “fly us closer so I can hit them with my sword.”

During the was Europe basically committed suicide and destroyed itself with a tremendous enthusiasm. All available weapons were used. Nowadays some areas in my country remain in the red area: completely destroyed, too dangerous for re-habitation (a 2005-2006 experiment found 216 active shells, fuses and grenades on a 100m² area, digging only up to up a 15cm depth). They are unfit for population and heavily polluted). Event forests at the location are off-limit (trees are full of splinters and too dangerous for lumberjacks and the soil if full of lead, arsenic, phosgene…).

Today 60 heads of states come and each of them visits its own war graves. There are hundreds in my area. Not hundred of graves. Hundreds of cemeteries. Each of them with 1.000 to 50.000 graves.

If you select randomly a class of 100 men, by the end of the war one 34 are dead. 23 have been wounded at least once.

Rigth now Macron and Markel are at Rethondes (place of high significance as armistices if ww1 and ww2 were signed there). Right now Trump was also expected in Bois Belleau but he cancelled “because it’s raining” (while his advisers go!). I’m really close to there and yes, there it’s just raining a little bit. This is a shame…

Hey Matthieu. Yep, I made a lengthy “11-11-11-18” post on the “Goat’s Ass” urging folks to reflect on the sacrifice of all involved, and to honor all veterans.
As a Frenchman, your perspectives and observations are always noteworthy since you do, indeed, live upon one gigantic battlefield. It’s hard think of anyplace else on earth that has been fertilized by more blood throughout the centuries than France.
By the way, thanks for the other little note you sent. Much appreciated, and I’ll put the contents to good use.

Assuming the Germany in the world the League of Tripoli comes from has Enigma machines. It is possible the Germans if they have them provide the codes for the League if so until the League is aware of U-112’s defection the Union will have an intelligence bonanza.

According to Wiki, the Japanese and the Italians had simpler versions of Enigma-like devices (electromechanical rotary wheel code machines). If so, one wonders why one wasn’t salvaged from Amagi — perhaps because the Japanese ships then didn’t have one? But the knowledge of rotary wheel coders was known from the end of WWI, so the League may well know about them. Whether U-112 has one…

My guess is the league changed their codes after U-112 left so small chance of eavesdropping. However the union can make use of the enigma themselves. Without Alan Turing or someone of his caliber and a computer to go with him the league has no hope of cracking their own encryption system. This is going to be a big coup for the union and go a long way to securing their comms. Enigma is poorly suited to real time tactical comms though. That can only be fixed by better comms discipline.

The only problem I’m seeing is that IIRC, proper communication would require at least one rotor machine to transmit, and one for each recipient.

What the Union could do is take the Enigma apart, mass produce an earlier design, and put at least one in every single HQ. Still gives the Allies vital hands-on electromechnical knowledge, but the League might be able to figure the simpler machine out with enough time and resources.

Only if they have mathematicians. Number theorists and crypto experts aren’t all that common even on our world at this time. It’s highly unlikely they have anyone with the training. The League has more people but like the destroyermen their skill set in STEM is probably limited to the practical application of military hardware. Mechanical engineering and electrical engineering are going to be the most common. One big caveat is the French were big into sending their officers to get post graduate degrees. The Germans were too before the end of WW1 and their military colleges were shit down. It’s possible they may have an officer in the French contingent with a high level math degree however cracking enigma required putting the best mathematicians in Britain under one roof with a lot of resources. I don’t think that’s a feat the League could match.

As far as replicating the enigma goes, the destroyermen have experience dealing with electromechanical devices. They have been able to copy the fire control computer of Walker at least twice now and it is also an electromechanical computer. Copying an enigma won’t happen overnight but such a complex machine has to come with service and repair manuals and of course they have men trained on its use and maintenance. I think given time, especially with the skills already earned in precision machining through other projects they could make a functionally exact replica.

As far as use goes I agree. It’s for strategic comms. Not real time tactical comms. You put them on ships, at bases and in field HQs.

The key here is that it denies the league to snoop on all of their comms. The rest comes from constantly rotating codes groups from the USN code books as well as really clamping down on the rampant comms abuse in the ranks. Radio silence needs to be observed in combat areas before action starts and nothing should be broadcast in the clear. Frequencies and codes should be regularly rotated and any gear at risk of capture must be destroyed. These best practices are obvious when dealing with a technologically comparable foe but the Grik and Doms don’t have radio so bad habits have been allowed to grow. That should have changed a few books back when it became apparent they had infosec issues. If I were a union Intel officer my first priority would be to dispatch men to clean up the fleet’s and army’s act in regards to comms.

Mr. Anderson do you think when this series has finally come to a close you’d make a section in the back of the book like a Memorial to the Fallen? Commemorating all the Cats, Destroyermen, Impies, and so on who’ve been lost in this war to end all wars?

Interesting notion. I don’t know if the back of the final book is the best place for such a thing, though. The copy editor would probably cut it since it would be so long! On the other hand, Charles and others have kept a pretty good list on the Wiki. Might be another one of those things we could expand upon.

That’s very true. So many characters have come and gone that it’d probably be fifty pages of nothing but names! Still I’m glad you’re receptive to the idea itself. Honestly I don’t know how you can keep up with all the named characters you’ve made and where they’re all at.

I don’t think I could without the CoC at the end of the book. And you know, it’s amazingly sad when I delete names of characters who have died, and start prepping the CoC for the next book. Kind of makes it real. Weird.
What’s fun, though, is when “named characters” who have been mentioned from time to time, but never made the cast because they don’t get a “big part,” or POV, suddenly jump to the front and “make the credits.”

Yeah you’re right I can only imagine what that must be like. Especially for when some of the “Old Breed” of characters from book one finally bite the bullet. So far when I’ve read your books I’ve gotten into the tradition of whenever a character I felt particularly attached to got their send off, I’ll set Taps to play. After watching these characters for just about a decade now I feel it’s the only fitting send off when they go.

im a big fan have all the books in audio from audible.com. was just looking at audiobook.com and noticed a review of ROB by someone who obviously hasn’t listened to the previous books. they gave you a 1 out of 5 . it sounded like they thought this was a standalone book and i was confused till i looked at the book cover and realized the cover does not say book 13 or reference the series it just says destroyermen at the top. you may want to change that before too many bad reviews kill sales of the book series

Thanks for the heads up, John, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Maybe a marketing decision? The HCs all have a list of previous books inside–that’s where I always look to make sure I’m not jumping into something in the middle–but I guess there’s no real way to do that electronically. Then again, seems like Amazon (isn’t that where people buy Audibles?) usually states “#5 of 13” or something like that? Either way, I haven’t looked at the review you describe. Seems like most of the really negative ones usually read like either they didn’t read it, (lots of “reviewers” actually LIKE to trash highly ranked stuff just for hoots, believe it or not), they’re mad because they can’t get the Kindle for .99, (like I have anything to do with that), or they just honestly don’t like the story. Oh yeah, some people hate all the technical stuff, or character development, and others hate that there’s not enough character development and technical stuff??!!. Nothing I can do about any of that and you can’t please everybody so I just do my best to write the best story I can and let the hate roll off. I have big shoulders. As always, I DO appreciate good reviews, of course, and they really do help–so please feel free to post one of you’re inclined.

i have been an audible platinum member since before it was purchased by Amazon and yes they do state very clearly that a book is book 13 for example . the site i was browsing was audiobook.com . i have not used them before and was surprised by that review and that the ROB page did not show book number. they only listed 5 reviews but only the really negative review was accessable.
keep up the good work personnally i think you walk the line quite well between too much and not enough detail as well as the line between too much detail reguarding the gore of battle and brushing off that aspect of war .

Hey! Yesterday was Halloween! Easy to tell when I’m pretty absorbed in what I’m writing . . .
I’ve seen that magazine cover before, and I may actually HAVE it. Have to look. My grandfather started one of the first radio stations and recording studios in Texas, (Big Spring), certainly west of Ft Worth, back in 1927. As a news outlet, he received papers and magazines from all over the country, and along with the tens of thousands of 78s going back to the teens, he also had similar numbers of those papers and magazines, um, “archived,” here and there. For good or bad, he had a “never throw anything interesting away” attitude–which I share on a comparatively microscopic scale.
When my grandfather passed, I was tasked with cleaning everything out. This included his music/sporting goods store (also around since the 20s), basements in several buildings, (some flooded), and various storage/warehouses on other properties he owned. Trying to sort out what was valuable and what was junk, for the benefit of my grandmother, was my first real exposure to archeology.
Anyway, back to the point, I KNOW I’ve seen that magazine, and for every, say, 1000 cubic feet of stuff I trashed or liquidated, I may have kept a few cubic inches. This includes the cream (to my tastes) of 78s, a few radios dating back to the teens, (including the first US Army wireless transmitter for airplanes, and a couple of stacks of historically interesting magazines. Like my interest in first edition history books written during or immediately after their subject, (examples: “History of the War of 1898” c.1898, “The Great War” c. 1919, “Life of General Scott” c. 1852, “The Rough Riders” c. 1899,” I consider these magazines to be snapshots of period perception, uncolored by hindsight–and certainly by modern revisionist perspectives. (Hindsight might’ve been 20-20 once, but it is increasingly distorted).
Oh well. Weird that seeing that magazine cover conjured such a stream of revelations and observations!

Just finished River of Bones this morning and I have to say it was a fantastic ride all the way through. I can’t wait for June to roll around just to have Mr. Anderson hit me right in my feels like he’s done with each book so far.